Animals are often placed in cages in a variety of situations, such as during a visit to a veterinarian office or in a laboratory conducting research involving animals. In situations in which animals are placed in cages, appropriate care of the animal can include monitoring a variety of animal activities and environmental factors that can affect or indicate the health of the animal. Some of the environmental factors that have been monitored in the past include the amount of liquid and food that the animal consumes. However, there are a wide variety of other environmental factors that can affect the health of an animal.
While environmental factors and animal activities have been conventionally monitored via manual observation, this approach requires repetitive observations by a person. Individuals who monitor environmental factors and animal activities may need training to be able to make accurate observations and measurements. Thus, this conventional approach is both time consuming and costly. Moreover, this approach cannot provide continuous monitoring.
Furthermore, some animals, and in particular some laboratory specimens having specific characteristics, such as pathogen free mice, can be quite valuable. Conventional manual monitoring systems can at best detect a problem some significant time after its onset. Delayed detection of problems can jeopardize the well being of the animal. Therefore, a system for continuously and automatically monitoring a wide variety of environmental factors related to an organism in a confined environment can provide time-saving and cost-saving benefits.